“Hi,” Dale said. “You work here?”
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
“Dale.”
“Come inside.” He opened the door and ushered him though.
Dale was surprised, the inside looked like it had once been a church. There were pews and an alter, and discolored paint on the wall that marked where a huge cross used to hang. “You here to get a doodad installed?”
“A doodad?” echoed Dale.
“A pleasure interface.” His eyes bore into Dale’s own. “No?”
“No. I was supposed to meet my lawyer–-”
“Okay! Sorry, my mistake. Right this way.” He led Dale across the room and through another door. The room beyond was small, cluttered with piles of computer decks and peripherals, and had one large stained-glass window. In the corner was a chair with a skull cap attached, an old cerebral induction setup. “Take a seat, Vlad should be here any minute. I’ll be right back.” He left and closed the door behind him, leaving Dale alone. Dale shivered.
It was cold and clammy, and smelled of mildew.
He sat in the induction chair and waited. Twenty minutes went by, and Dale was just about ready to get up and leave when he heard laughing voices and footsteps approaching. The door opened and Vlad and the oriental man walked in, stifling their laughter.
It gave Dale the impression that they were laughing about him.
“Hey, Dale, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Let’s get started right now. Professor Aki here is going to put you in a simple Alpha trance and we’re going to feed the essay into your subconscious. After we’re sure it’s firmly in your memory and your attitude toward it is very positive, you’re going to write it out. I’ll take it from there, and hand deliver it to the local Census office. And you’ve got a new start! Okay?
Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Aki, let’s do it.”
Professor Aki adjusted the skull cap and then turned to a computer terminal. He hit a few buttons and suddenly, against his will, Dale felt himself relax. Consciousness dropped away like a stone falling down a deep, black well.
Consciousness came back like a car slamming into a wall.
Professor Aki was still at the terminal, and Vlad was standing in front of him folding a piece of paper and slipping it into an envelope. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said.
“What?” said Dale.
“It’s over. I’ve got the essay, I’m about to run it down to the Census for you. Now all we have to do is settle the account, and you’re on your way.”
“What was – what did I write?”
“You wrote a very convincing report about your independent study of the value of modern broadcast television. You plan on writing a book about it, warning the public of the dangers of video sedation.”
“I am?”
“Don’t worry, you don’t actually have to write it. You just have to get involved in something worth while during the next five years.”
The amount of money Vlad wanted for his services was a surprise. It was over half of the money Dale had left in the bank, the interest of which Dale had been living on since the settlement with L5 Corp. In the end, though, Dale agreed that his life and citizenship was worth it, and he sealed the transaction with his thumb print.
#
Several days went by in a blur, and one afternoon during an interesting repeat of Sexual Deviancies of the Rich and Famous there was a knock on Dale’s door. He turned down the sound and got up to look through the peep hole. Several people were standing outside, all in uniform. “Dale Bently, please open the door right now,” one of them called out. It was a short, pretty black woman with her hair tucked up under her uniform cap. Her voice was very commanding and yet, at the same time, bored. It gave him the impression she did this all the time.
“What do you want?” he called through the door.
“It’s very important that we talk to you.”
“About what?”
His hesitation made her angry. “Look Mr. Bently, we have a Writ of Total Compliance and we’ll burn through this door if we have to. Do you understand that? You open this door right now!”
Dale opened the door. The black woman stepped quickly inside holding a piece of paper, immediately followed by three men and another woman holding clipboards. “By order of the Department of Judgement of the Census Bureau of the National Government you are hereby informed that you failed the justification test as defined by the United Order of Justification to Society, Articles IV
through XV, and your citizenship is hereby revoked for the cause of conservation of energy and resources. Your property and assets are hereby seized for redistribution. You’re ordered forthwith to surrender your physical existence in exchange for public social simulation.” She took a breath. “You have three phone calls before we proceed. You can use them anytime between now and dissociation.” She fell silent, waiting for him to say something, while the others went right to work writing out an inventory of his possessions.
Dale said nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “You can take your phone calls later. Are you going to come quietly now or am I going to have to cuff you?”
Dale erupted. “You can’t do this! What gives you the right to come barging into my home telling me what–-”
She sprayed him in the face with a small aerosol can and Dale’s throat closed. The world spun and he pitched over on his back, reeling, making sounds like a startled cow. When his sense began to work properly again he saw a black corrugated rubber mat about 2 inches from his face. Groaning, blinking his eyes to get them to focus better, he sat up and saw the back of a chair through a heavy screen, and the back of a head. A red sign on the screen read:
ELECTRIFIED – DO NOT TOUCH!
He was in a police van, by the looks of it. His hands were firmly bound behind his back.
The van bounced slightly as it sped down a city street, the engines making an eerie electric whining sound. I failed! Dale was thinking. I failed the test! How could this have happened, Vlad guaranteed I would pass! Then a dark thought occurred to him: Vlad could have guaranteed anything he wanted, because if he was wrong and Dale failed the evaluation – which he did – Dale was in no position to complain. For one thing, he was not a citizen anymore, which meant he had no rights, but even if he did he had broken the law. The Census agents would laugh at him.
The van came to a stop and the rear door popped open and lifted. To Dale’s surprise, a bound and staggering Professor Aki was thrown in, and the door dropped closed and locked with a loud thud. The “professor” – if he actually was a professor – lay face down and drooling on the mat. No doubt he’d been sprayed in the face with the same chemical they’d used on Dale.
“Maaawwwnnpffk!” Aki said into the mat. “Yurrrrafffrekkkksssphk!”
A half hour later, Vlad Breenwood, too, was thrown into the van. It appeared they had used more than the aerosol on him, as there was a singed hole in the back of his shirt and the burn marks of an electric stun gun. “You!” he said, after regaining consciousness. “You bastard!”
“Me?” Dale said.
“You bastard from hell! You data dump! I ought to kill you, you miserable cretin!”
“Refrigerate, man,” Aki said under his breath. “Freeze it.”
“To hell with you!” Vlad shouted at him.
“Keep it down or you’ll get another jolt,” the agent in the driver’s seat yelled back at Vlad.
Vlad glanced at the driver, then backed down.
“What are you yelling at me about?” Dale said angrily. “I’m here thanks to your bogus letter–-”
“Don’t give me that you runty little rat-head! You turned me in!”
“No I didn’t! I didn’t have the chance!”
The driver stopped the van and turned around. “One more word, one little sound, and I jolt all of you. Keep your mouths shut.”
Vlad turned away, glaring at his own feet. Not a word was spoken during the remainder of the ride. When the van stopped, it was in front of the Pacific Avenue Euthanasia Center.
Dale was separated from the other two and escorted to a white-walled room where an attendant strapped him into a bed while an armed guard stood by the door. When Dale was fully strapped down, the guard left. The attendant was a kind-looking young man in a white medical jump suit, with long, curly brown hair and warm brown eyes. He prepared a injection gun and gave Dale a smile.
“So this is it,” Dale said, his throat dry. “You’re going to put me to sleep like a dog.”